Is It Possible to Monetarily Quantify the Emotional Value Transferred by Companies and Organizations? An Emotional Accounting Proposal

Social accounting focuses on value transactions between organizations and their stakeholders; both market ones, where the value perceived by the different stakeholders is identified, and non-markets ones, where transactions are monetized at their fair value. There was long awareness of an emotional value translation, linked to the transfer of different products, services, remunerations, and incentives, regardless of whether they were market or non-market. Yet that emotional value seemed to be anchored in the field of psychology and managed to elude economic science. This study seeks to identify emotional value with consumer surplus and, by extension, of the other stakeholders in a value transfer process. This proposal allows the emotional value to be anchored in the micro-economy and allows it to be objectively calculated using a regression involving three elements: the market price, the fair value interval, and a perceived satisfaction score by the different stakeholders in the form of significant sampling. The result obtained not only allows Social Accounting to be complemented with emotional value, but it also facilitates its incorporation in the strategy to optimize the emotional value. Furthermore, it enables a quantification of the perceived subjective utility, which opens up a research path where some possible lines are clearly identified.

Social Accounting as an Enabling Tool to Develop Collective Organizational Citizenship Behavior in the Diocese of Bilbao

Religious oriented organizations (ROOs) have frequently higher levels of motivation among their employees, because the aims of ROOs and those of collaborators and stakeholders are usually aligned. However, sometimes, when the management of ROOs becomes professionalized, tensions between aims and efficiency are more frequent, and productivity levels start to decline. The most widespread current management theories are focused on profit maximization and are not especially helpful to religious organizations which try to enhance their productivity levels and, at the same time, achive their mission and aims. In order to fill this gap, in this research, we will develop two main concepts: social accounting and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). We will propose the use of social accounting to calculate the social value generated by ROOs and, from that point, build new indicators able to measure the organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) of collaborators working in ROOs. We will exemplify this theoretical development with the actual case of the diocese of Bilbao. In short, the main objectives of this work are two. The first objective is the development of a theoretical framework able to enhance the levels of social value creation inside religious (and socially oriented) organizations using social accounting. The second objective is the use of data from the 16 educative centers of the diocese of Bilbao to ilustrate that social accounting is a valid tool to measure social value. Additionally, we will show that social accounting can be a tool to assess management decisions in order to enhance organizational and individual OCB in ROOs and, in this way, generate moral satisfaction for employees and collaborators in their organizations.

[Social value added index: a proposal for analyzing hospital efficiency]

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that it is possible to monetize the social value generated by a hospital and use it to establish a different perspective to analyze the efficiency of public spending.

METHOD

A public hospital in Spain was selected using the case method. It is suitable for two reasons; first, the hospital activity is small and therefore dialogue with stakeholders is easy; and second, as it is a hospital of a residential nature, it allows an easy, modifiable and testable approximation of social accounting in hospitals.

RESULTS

It establishes the monetary translation of the activity of a hospital, including the social part of the economic transactions (market), the variables that have not been created based on economic transaction, but have been perceived and valued by the stakeholders (not market), and the satisfaction of the stakeholders (emotional). This socio-emotional value amounts to approximately 60 million Euros per year from 2013 to 2017.

CONCLUSIONS

The social value generated for the stakeholders, and its monetization, allows more efficient management of decisions towards the social purpose of public hospitals. In particular, the social value added index can be a tool for the social-efficiency of hospitals, as it establishes how much social value it generates from the public funding allocated to it. Thus, the decline in this value in recent years denotes a problem that, without this analysis with a social perspective and from the stakeholders, could not have been detected.

Single case research methodology: a tool for moral imagination in business ethics

Purpose

Although there are several often-used case research methods for teaching purposes, these cannot be used to conduct scientific research into business ethics, perhaps owing to criticism levelled against it. The precise aim of this work is to expound and argue for its use within the framework of scientific hypothetical-deductive methodology.

Design/methodology/approach

The opportunities offered by this methodological approach, both from an inductive (Eisenhardt, 1989; Dyer and Wilkins, 1991) and a deductive perspective (Yin, 1993; Carson et al., 2000), have been wasted, creating a need for scientific contributions within this area; hence, this study. It was carried on a theoretical approach of the use of single case applied to corporate management based on religion and spirituality inclusion.

Findings

The results obtained indicate that the single-case research method makes it possible to put forward alternative hypotheses to the dominant hypothesis, making contributions to the theory. Concretely, the scientific legitimacy of its use is justified by what it has been called “possibilistic hypothesis” for what it is not necessary to collect a large data or make an empiric research.

Practical implications

In the field of business ethics, these hypotheses (possibilistics) make alternatives stand out that widen the moral responsibility of decision-makers. It implies an open mind for decision-makers and rigorous arguments using just a single case. Reinforce and make them easier based on moral imagination improvement.

Originality/value

The decision process is complex, but in this rich method, the single-case study could permit establishing rigorous and robust decisions easily. The case study is not used widely for management, but this perspective could enrich and increase its use.